Perl is Alive!

and kicking!
Perl 5 doesn't need to be hip and new (like some people seem to think python and ruby are), Perl 6 will fix that
Perl 5 is itself growing and evolving, bridging the gap to Perl 6
Parrot v1 is soon to hit the shelves
Rakudo should be soon to follow
The dusty old conservatives of the Perl community will slowly accept Perl 6 because it is a better *Perl*
LPM seems to be slowly becoming more friendly to new comers (even Matt Trout was talking at LPW about new people getting involved and getting friendly support from the community)
Newer groups like Italy, B&BPM, etc, seem to be going from strength to strength
A lot of new (and old) ideas are coming up... Some people will make attempts to take them forward... After all once it's started, you never know who'll help or finish it...
Perl itself doesn't need to make changes to attract new programmers. Perl is great, that's why we are all here :) All we need is to make new people try coding Perl. Perl does the rest. Looking to hard at other languages and trying to pull programmers from them is futile (unless you are talking about ones like VB). The future is with the youth, and the solution is simple, as Tony said "Education, Education, Education!".
Perlbloke